Steve Jobs, Apple founder, dies - CNN.com Steve Jobs, Apple founder, dies By Brandon Griggs, CNN Updated 11:12 PM ET, Wed October 5, 2011 Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what's happening in the world as it unfolds. JUST WATCHED Jobs had battled cancer for years Jobs founded Apple when he was 21 He developed the concept of the personal computer and mouse He oversaw the launch of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad Steve Jobs, the visionary in the black turtleneck who co-founded Apple in a Silicon Valley garage, built it into the world's leading tech company and led a mobile-computing revolution with wildly popular devices such as the iPhone, died Wednesday. He was 56. The hard-driving executive pioneered the concept of the personal computer and of navigating them by clicking onscreen images with a mouse. In more recent years, he introduced the iPod portable music player, the iPhone and the iPad tablet -- all of which changed how we consume content in the digital age. Fortune: Ten ways Steve Jobs changed the world His friends and Apple fans on Wednesday night mourned the passing of a tech titan.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," Apple said in a statement. "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve." See reactions from Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and many others More than one pundit, praising Jobs' ability to transform entire industries with his inventions, called him a modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci. "Steve Jobs is one of the great innovators in the history of modern capitalism," New York Times columnist Joe Nocera said in August. "His intuition has been phenomenal over the years." Jobs' death, while dreaded by Apple's legions of fans, was not unexpected. He had battled cancer for years, took a medical leave from Apple in January and stepped down as chief executive in August because he could "no longer meet (his) duties and expectations." Born February 24, 1955, and then adopted, Jobs grew up in Cupertino, California -- which would become home to Apple's headquarters -- and showed an early interest in electronics. As a teenager, he phoned William Hewlett, president of Hewlett-Packard, to request parts for a school project. He got them, along with an offer of a summer job at HP.

Jobs dropped out of Oregon's Reed College after one semester, although he returned to audit a class in calligraphy, which he says influenced Apple's graceful, minimalist aesthetic. He quit one of his first jobs, designing video games for Atari, to backpack across India and take psychedelic drugs. Those experiences, Jobs said later, shaped his creative vision. JUST WATCHED MUST WATCH Jobs 'set the agenda' for tech industry 03:00 "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future," he told Stanford University graduates during a commencement speech in 2005. "You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life." View a time line of Steve Jobs' work While at HP, Jobs befriended Steve Wozniak, who impressed him with his skill at assembling electronic components. The two later joined a Silicon Valley computer hobbyists club, and when he was 21, Jobs teamed with Wozniak and two other men to launch Apple Computer Inc.

It's long been Silicon Valley legend: Jobs and Wozniak built their first commercial product, the Apple 1, in Jobs' parents' garage in 1976. Jobs sold his Volkswagen van to help finance the venture. The primitive computer, priced at $666.66, had no keyboard or display, and customers had to assemble it themselves. The following year, Apple unveiled the Apple II computer at the inaugural West Coast Computer Faire. The machine was a hit, and the personal computing revolution was under way. Jobs was among the first computer engineers to recognize the appeal of the mouse and the graphical interface, which let users operate computers by clicking on images instead of writing text. Apple's pioneering Macintosh computer launched in early 1984 with a now-iconic, Orwellian-themed Super Bowl ad. The boxy beige Macintosh sold well, but the demanding Jobs clashed frequently with colleagues, and in 1986, he was ousted from Apple after a power struggle. Then came a 10-year hiatus during which he founded NeXT Computer, whose pricey, cube-shaped computer workstations never caught on with consumers.

Jobs had more success when he bought Pixar Animation Studios from George Lucas before the company made it big with "Toy Story." Jobs brought the same marketing skill to Pixar that he became known for at Apple. His brief but emotional pitch for "Finding Nemo," for example, was a masterful bit of succinct storytelling. Share your memories and images of Steve Jobs In 1996, Apple bought NeXT, returning Jobs to the then-struggling company he had co-founded. Within a year, he was running Apple again -- older and perhaps wiser but no less of a perfectionist. And in 2001, he took the stage to introduce the original iPod, the little white device that transformed portable music and kick-started Apple's furious comeback. Thus began one of the most remarkable second acts in the history of business. Over the next decade, Jobs wowed launch-event audiences, and consumers, with one game-changing hit after another: iTunes (2003), the iPhone (2007), the App Store (2008), and the iPad (2010).

Review Jobs' top moments as a showman Observers marveled at Jobs' skills as a pitchman, his ability to inspire godlike devotion among Apple "fanboys" (and scorn from PC fans) and his "one more thing" surprise announcements. Time after time, he sold people on a product they didn't know they needed until he invented it. And all this on an official annual salary of $1. He also built a reputation as a hard-driving, mercurial and sometimes difficult boss who oversaw almost every detail of Apple's products and rejected prototypes that didn't meet his exacting standards. By the late 2000s, his once-renegade tech company, the David to Microsoft's Goliath, was entrenched at the uppermost tier of American business. Apple now operates more than 300 retail stores in 11 countries. The company has sold more than 275 million iPods, 100 million iPhones and 25 million iPads worldwide. Jobs' climb to the top was complete in summer 2011, when Apple listed more cash reserves than the U.S. Treasury and even briefly surpassed Exxon Mobil as the world's most valuable company.

CNNMoney.com: Apple stock under Jobs But Jobs' health problems sometimes cast a shadow over his company's success. In 2004, he announced to his employees that he was being treated for pancreatic cancer. He lost weight and appeared unusually gaunt at keynote speeches to Apple developers, spurring concerns about his health and fluctuations in the company's stock price. One wire service accidentally published Jobs' obituary. Jobs had a secret liver transplant in 2009 in Tennessee during a six-month medical leave of absence from Apple. He took another medical leave in January this year. Perhaps mindful of his legacy, he cooperated on his first authorized biography, scheduled to be published by Simon & Schuster in November. Jobs is survived by his wife of 20 years, Laurene, and four children, including one from a prior relationship. He always spoke with immense pride about what he and his engineers accomplished at Apple. "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do," he told the Stanford grads in 2005.

"If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on." Steve Jobs Dies: Apple Chief Innovated Personal Computer, Created iPad, iPod, iPhone - ABC News ABC News Steve Jobs Dies: Apple Chief Made Early Personal Computer, Created iPad, iPod, iPhone By NED POTTER Email Steve Jobs, the mastermind behind Apple 's iPhone, iPad, iPod, iMac and iTunes, has died, Apple said late today. He was 56 years old. Jobs died peacefully, surrounded by family members, his family said in a statement. In recent years Jobs had fought a form of pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant. "Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives," read a statement by Apple's board of directors . "The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family.

Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts." Jobs co-founded Apple Computer in 1976 and, with his childhood friend Steve Wozniak, marketed what was considered the world's first successful personal computer, the Apple II. Industry watchers called Jobs a master innovator -- perhaps on a par with Thomas Edison -- changing the worlds of computing, recorded music and communications. "I'm shocked and disturbed," said Wozniak when reached by ABC News. Later, on ABC News' "Nightline," he said it was hard to imagine, in some ways, how the world would move forward without Jobs. "You get shocked when people you know die," Wozniak said. "And this was closer to when John Lennon died, or JFK or Martin Luther King." As Jobs' death was announced, the homepage of Apple's website switched to a full-page image of Jobs with the text, "Steve Jobs 1955-2011." Clicking on the image brought one to additional text that was attributed to Apple's current CEO, Tim Cook. "Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being," the text read.

"Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve have lost a dear friend and an inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple." Reaction to Jobs' death came from far and wide. "Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs," President Obama said in a written statement. "Steve was among the greatest of American innovators -- brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it." Jobs' rivals in the development of personal computers, Microsoft co-founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen, immediately reacted to his death and highlighted his importance to their industry. Allen called him "a unique tech pioneer and auteur who knew how to make amazingly great products." Gates said, "Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. "The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come," Gates said. "For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it's been an insanely great honor.

I will miss Steve immensely." Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said, "Steve, thank you for being a mentor and a friend. Thanks for showing that what you build can change the world. I will miss you." Click here for more reaction to Jobs' death. Jobs continued to create in recent years despite his failing health. He took three medical leaves from Apple. In 2004, he beat back an unusual form of pancreatic cancer, and in 2009 he was forced to get a liver transplant. Jobs finally announced on Aug. 24, 2011 that he was stepping down as Apple's chief executive. "I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, I would be the first to let you know," Jobs wrote in his letter of resignation. "Unfortunately, that day has come." He remained as chairman of the corporation, a new position created for him. Steve Jobs Dies: Remembering a Tech Innovator Jobs' family released a statement tonight thanking everyone who had expressed concern about his health in the final year of his life. "In his public life, Steve was known as a visionary; in his private life, he cherished his family," the statement said.

"We are grateful for the support and kindness of those who share our feelings for Steve. We know many of you will mourn with us, and we ask that you respect our privacy during our time of grief." One of the world's most famous CEOs, Jobs remained stubbornly private about his personal life, refusing interviews and shielding his wife and their children from public view. "He's never been a media person," said industry analyst Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, after Jobs resigned in August. "He's granted interviews in the context of product launches, when it benefits Apple, but you never see him talk about himself." Apple said it was not planning any public events, though Cook's memo to Apple employees said the company was "planning a celebration of Steve's extraordinary life for Apple employees that will take place soon." At Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., tonight, people were hugging and crying. Candles were lit around an iPad with a picture of Jobs on the screen, and people quietly stood and looked at the memorial. Apple fans also gathered at an Apple store in New York City, though a security guard said he was told to pick up any flowers and remove anything like a shrine.

"For all he did -- his inventions, the way he changed technology and communications -- I felt I was obligated, in a way, just to say, "Thank you.'" said David Del Toro, 37, of Miami. The highlights of Jobs's career trajectory are well-known: a prodigy who dropped out of Reed College in Oregon and, at 21, started Apple with Wozniak in his parents' garage. He was a multimillionaire by 25, appeared on the cover of Time magazine at 26, and was ousted at Apple at age 30, in 1985. In the years that followed, he went into other businesses, founding NeXT computers and, in 1986, buying the computer graphics arm of Lucasfilm, Ltd. -- which became Pixar Animation Studios and transformed the cartoon world with such films as "Toy Story" and "WALL-E." He was described as an exacting and sometimes fearsome leader, ordering up and rejecting multiple versions of new products until the final version was just right. He said the design and aesthetics of a device were as important as the hardware and software inside.

Click Here for Pictures: Apple's Iconic Products In 1996, Apple, which had struggled without Jobs, brought him back by buying NeXT. He became CEO in 1997 and put the company on a remarkable upward path. By 2001, the commercial music industry was on its knees because digital recordings, copied and shared online for free, made it unnecessary for millions of people to buy compact discs. Jobs took advantage with the iPod -- essentially a pocket-sized computer hard drive with elegantly simple controls and a set of white earbuds so that one could listen to the hours of music one saved on it. He set up the iTunes online music store, and persuaded major recording labels to sell songs for 99 cents each. No longer did people have to go out and buy a CD if they liked just one song from it. They bought a digital file and stored it in their iPods. "Other companies sold digital music before Apple," said Bill Werde, editorial director of Billboard magazine. "Other companies made digital music available on computers and digital phones and used it in commercials.

Apple's brilliance -- and I don't think anyone doubts that this was Steve Jobs' brilliance -- was that Apple made it exciting and simple and effortless and fun. Before Steve Jobs, digital music was math class. After, it was recess." Jobs did not rest. In 2007, he transformed the cellphone. Apple's iPhone, with its iconic touch screen, was a handheld computer, music player, messaging device, digital wallet and -- almost incidentally -- telephone. Major competitors, such as BlackBerry, Nokia and Motorola, struggled after it appeared. By 2010, Apple's new iPad began to cannibalize its original business, the personal computer. The iPad was a sleek tablet computer with a touch screen and almost no physical buttons. It could be used for almost anything software designers could conceive, from watching movies to taking pictures to leafing through a virtual book. Steve Jobs' Personal Life Jobs kept a close cadre of friends, Bajarin said, including John Lasseter of Pixar and Larry Ellison of Oracle, but beyond that, shared very little of his personal life with anyone.

But that personal life -- he was given up at birth for adoption, had an illegitimate child, was romantically linked with movie stars -- was full of intrigue for his fan base and Apple consumers. Jobs and his wife, Laurene Powell, were married in a small ceremony in Yosemite National Park in 1991, lived in Woodside, Calif., and had three children, Reed, Erin and Eve. He admitted that when he was 23, he had a child out of wedlock with his high school girlfriend, Chris Ann Brennan. Their daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs, was born in 1978. He had a biological sister, Mona Simpson, the author of such well-known books as "Anywhere But Here." But he did not meet Simpson until they were adults and he was seeking out his birth parents. Simpson later wrote a book based on their relationship. Its title: "A Regular Guy." Fortune magazine reported that Jobs denied for years that he was the father of Lisa Brennan Jobs, at one point swearing in a court document that he was infertile and could not have children. According to the report, Chris Ann Brennan collected welfare for a time to support the child until Jobs later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.

There were other personal details that emerged over the years, as well. At Reed, Jobs became romantically involved with the singer Joan Baez, according to Elizabeth Holmes, a friend and classmate. In "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs," Holmes tells biographer Alan Deutschman that Jobs broke up with his serious girlfriend to "begin an affair with the charismatic singer-activist." Holmes confirmed the details to ABC News. Jobs' Health and Apple's Health Enigmatic and charismatic, Jobs said little about himself. But then his body began to fail him. In 2004, he was forced to say publicly he had a rare form of pancreatic cancer. In 2009, it was revealed that he had quietly gone to a Memphis hospital for a liver transplant. In 2009, sources said, members of Apple's board of directors had to persuade him to disclose more about his health as "a fiduciary issue," interwoven with the health of the company. He was listed in March as 109th on the Forbes list of the world's billionaires , with a net worth of about $8.3 billion.

After selling Pixar animation studios to The Walt Disney Company in 2006, he became a Disney board member and the company's largest shareholder. Disney is the parent company of ABC News . Analysts said Apple performed well during Jobs' absence, partly because he was available for big decisions and partly because his chief lieutenant, Tim Cook, was the hands-on manager even when Jobs was there. The company has a history of bouncing back. In January 2009, after he announced his second medical leave, Apple stock dropped to $78.20 per share. But it quickly recovered and became one of the most successful stocks on Wall Street. On one day in the summer of 2011, with the stock hitting the $400 level, Apple briefly passed ExxonMobil as the world's most valuable company. ABC News' Neal Karlinsky, Gregory J. Krieg, Alex Stone and Catherine McKenzie contributed to this report. 0 Shares Apple Computers: This Month in Business History (Business Reference Services, Library of Congress) This Month in Business History Company History Apple Computers, Inc.

was founded on April 1, 1976, by college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who brought to the new company a vision of changing the way people viewed computers. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to make computers small enough for people to have them in their homes or offices. Simply put, they wanted a computer that was user-friendly. 1 Jobs and Wozniak started out building the Apple I in Jobs' garage and sold them without a monitor, keyboard, or casing (which they decided to add on in 1977). The Apple II revolutionized the computer industry with the introduction of the first-ever color graphics.1 Sales jumped from $7.8 million in 1978 to $117 million in 1980, the year Apple went public. 2 Wozniak left Apple in 1983 due to a diminishing interest in the day-to-day running of Apple Computers. Jobs then hired PepsiCo's John Sculley to be president. However, this move backfired and after much controversy with Sculley, Jobs left in 1985 and went on to new and bigger things.

He founded his own company NeXT Software and he also bought Pixar from George Lucas, which would later become a huge success in computer animation of such movies as Toy Story . 3 Through the rest of the 1980s, Apple was still doing well and in 1990 it posted its highest profits yet. This was, however, mostly due to the plans that Jobs had already set in motion before he left, most notably his deal with a tiny company by the name of Adobe, creator of the Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). Together the two companies created the phenomenon known as desktop publishing. 4 Back in 1985 Sculley turned down an appeal from Microsoft founder Bill Gates to license its software. This decision would later come back to haunt him because Microsoft, whose Windows operating system (OS) featured a graphical interface similar to Apple's, became their toughest competition in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s. 5 Over the course of a few years, Apple's market share suffered slowly after its peak in 1990 and by 1996, experts believed the company to be doomed.

It was not until 1997, when Apple was desperately in need of an operating system, that it bought out NeXT Software (Jobs' company) and the board of directors decided to ask for some help from an old friend: Steve Jobs. Jobs became an interim CEO, or iCEO as he called himself (Jobs was not officially the CEO until 2000). Jobs decided to make some changes around Apple. He forged an alliance with Microsoft to create a Mac version of its popular office software. 6 Not long after this decision was the turning point for the company. Jobs revamped the computers and introduced the iBook (a personal laptop). He also started branching out into mp3 players (iPod) and media player software (iTunes). This was Jobs' best move yet. While computers are still an important part of Apple, its music related products (i.e. iPod and iTunes) have become the company's most profitable sector. Apple has also recently released the iPhone, a cellular phone, and the Apple TV. While Steve Jobs died October 5, 2011, Apple continues on with his legacy. Apple Inc. has pioneered its way through the computer industry—not once, but multiple times throughout its existence.

It believes in pushing the limits of creativity in order to produce interesting and valuable products for society. After more than 30 years, it is undeniable that Apple "has had a profound impact on technology, innovating and influencing not only how we use computers but the activities for which what we use them." 7 For the latest information from Apple Computers, including a list of the current Board of Directors , see the company web site . Interesting Fact Steve Jobs' company NeXT manufactured NeXT Cube, which, while way too expensive and not commercially successful, was actually used as the world's first web server! 8 If you have any further questions, please Ask A Librarian . Library of Congress Catalog Searches Additional works on this topic in the Library of Congress may be identified by searching the Online Catalog under appropriate Library of Congress subject headings. Choose the topics you wish to search from the following list of Library of Congress subject headings to link directly to the Catalog and automatically execute a search for the subject selected. Please be aware that during periods of heavy use you may encounter delays in accessing the catalog. Please see the individual sections of this guide for catalog searches relating to those topics. For assistance in locating the many other subject headings which relate to this subject, please consult a reference librarian .

Steve Jobs founded Apple not once but twice - Telegraph Apple Steve Jobs founded Apple not once but twice As Steve Jobs steps down as Apple chief executive, his biographer, Michael Moritz, pays tribute to a man who changed the world. Steve Jobs fought a rare form of pancreatic cancer Photo: PAUL SAKUMA By Michael Moritz Comments Steve Jobs was, until this week, the chief executive of Apple, but much more importantly – even though his business card does not say this – he is a founder of the company. As the history of Apple shows, there is no greater distance known to man than the single footfall that separates a CEO from a founder. Chief executives are, for the most part, products of educational and institutional breeding. Founders or, at least, the very best of them, are unstoppable, irrepressible forces of nature. Of the many founders I’ve encountered, Jobs is the most captivating. Jobs, more than any one other person, has turned modern electronics into objects of desire. He has always possessed the soul of the questioning poet – someone a little removed from the rest of us who, from an early age, beat his own path.

Had he been born at a different time, it’s easy to see how he would have hopped freight cars and followed his star. He was adopted in 1955 as a baby and raised by well-meaning parents in California who never had much money. Paul Jobs looked like a responsible James Dean, worked for a finance company as a jack-of-all-trades, and later tried his hand at real estate. To help make ends meet, his mother Clara found part-time work in the payroll department of a company that made radar devices. There were no family vacations, the furniture was reconditioned and there was no colour television. Paul built most of the home comforts. Paul and Clara began to endure all common parental perils. Young Steve took to waking up so early that they bought him a gramophone and some Little Richard records so that he could amuse himself. Later, on one occasion, he had his stomach pumped after he and an accomplice built a miniature chemical lab from bottles of ant poison.

Related Articles Steve Jobs' rivals are hungry for an Apple crumble 25 Aug 2011 When Jobs was a teenager, growing up in Los Altos, he could never have imagined that one day he would be at the helm of a company whose headquarters is just 1.6 miles from the front gate of his high school, Homestead High in Cupertino. He might wonder, too, about those twists and turns that helped make him what he is: the fact that his boyhood was spent in an area that, back then, had not even been labelled Silicon Valley; that Apple’s co-founder, Stephen Wozniak, was a boyhood chum; and that he worked one summer as a lab technician at Atari, the maker of Pong, the first popular arcade video game. While still at high school, he entered a science fair for which he built a silicon-controlled rectifier, a device that can be used to control alternating current. The whirl of electronics intrigued Jobs, but there was a lot more to his life. He spent as much time dabbling with artistic and literary pursuits as he did with frequency counters.

He was attracted by literature, studied some Shakespeare, idolised his English teacher, and was enchanted by movies such as The Red Balloon. When Jobs started to sift through university brochures, he decided he wanted to try life in the Pacific North at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, a school that exerts an unusual appeal for bright and thoughtful teenagers, and which, in the early 1970s, was tailor-made for any child who wished he had been at Woodstock. It was there that a calligraphy class sharpened his sense of the aesthetic – that influence is still apparent in all Apple products and advertising. At Reed, student Robert Friedland became a mentor and surrogate elder brother. He paraded about the campus dressed in Indian robes while campaigning for the student presidency. His campaign theme was blunt: he was running to erase the stigma of a two-year jail sentence for what was then the largest LSD bust east of Mississippi. “Robert was the first person I met who was convinced the phenomenon of enlightenment existed,” Jobs said later.

[In the summer of 1973 he followed Friedland to India and returned dressed in Indian attire, with closely cropped hair, and as a Buddhist.] Jobs virtually fell into Apple for want of anything else to do. During January and February 1976, he started to badger Wozniak about the possibility of making and selling some printed circuit boards so that others could build their own computers. Continuing to work at Atari, he entertained the notion of a fleeting, informal venture that would be more of a partnership between friends than a proper company. One afternoon, driving along Highway 85 between Palo Alto and Los Altos, Jobs, summoning shades of his dietary regime and his college days in Oregon, suggested they call the company Apple Computers. Try as he might, Wozniak couldn’t improve on the suggestion. Aware from the start of the importance of image, Jobs organised a polished corporate address by renting a PO Box in Palo Alto. He hired an answering service to give the impression that Apple was a steady enterprise. The gradual change from a bloated garage operation into something resembling a corporation was arduous.

Once Apple announced its creation of a new disk drive in 1978, orders increased and riches arrived more quickly. A hullabaloo surrounded the introduction of the Macintosh in 1984, but then the notices turned sour. Apple’s board fired Jobs in favour of John Sculley, once of Pepsi Cola, a man who was a creature of convention. These were wilderness years. Characteristically, Jobs sold all but one share of his Apple holdings and concentrated instead on shaping a new company that he came to call NeXT. He raised money from investors and persisted when weaker beings would have thrown in the towel and been consigned to occupy a footnote in history. He was weathered by these years and learnt to cope with dire circumstances. It’s hard now to appreciate the straits that Apple was in after it bought NeXT at the end of 1996 in a desperate effort to revive itself. The Silicon Valley cynics chuckled at the way Jobs was able to sell NeXT for more than $400 million even though it had only sold about 50,000 computers. Steve Jobs returned to Apple. It had lost its creative zest and leadership position in the technology industry.

His response was to roll out an advertising campaign labelled “Think Different”, based on black-and-white photographs of remarkable individuals. It was a rallying cry and said in plain terms that the company could not afford to mimic others, but needed to forge its own path. And it has. Many are familiar with the subsequent re-emergence of Apple. They may not be as familiar with the fact that it has few, if any parallels. When did a founder ever return to the company from which he had been rudely rejected to engineer a turnaround as complete and spectacular as Apple’s? It is not too much of a stretch to say that Steve Jobs founded Apple not once but twice. And the second time he was alone. Since 1997, Apple has sold more than 200 million iPods, 10 billion iTunes songs, 100 million iPhones, and more than 60 million computers. As a sideline, Jobs single-handedly financed and helped shape Pixar, the computer animation company that has more than $5 billion in cumulative box office sales from its immensely popular movies.

Jobs’s critics say he can be wilful, obdurate, irascible, temperamental, and stubborn, but show me someone who has achieved anything meaningful who, from time to time, doesn’t display these characteristics, who is not a perfectionist. There is also the mischievous, calculating, suspicious twinkle of the souk about Jobs. He is an insistent, persuasive and mesmerising salesman – the only man I know with the audacity to adorn bus shelters nationwide with advertisements for a product as mundane as a wireless mouse. But he is also a man who, decades ago, was kind enough to visit in hospital a chief executive felled by a stroke and who, more recently, in an avuncular fashion, has offered younger Silicon Valley bosses generous advice. With Jobs’s bouts of ill-health [in 2004 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and in 2009 he took leave of absence and underwent a liver transplant] and now his decision to stand down as chief executive, the inevitable question for Apple is what comes next? Who could compare with the man whose identity and face is so closely tied to the company?

For Steve Jobs’s business life deserves to be ranked among the greatest of any American, living or dead. 'Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs, the Creation of Apple, and how it Changed the World’ by Michael Moritz (Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd, RRP £8.99) is available from Telegraph Books at £8.99 + 99p p&p. Call 0844 871 1515 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk Biography of Steve Jobs By Mary Bellis Updated August 31, 2016. Steve Jobs is the co-founder of Apple Computers , the makers of well-designed, well-coordinated and good-looking personal home computers. Steve Jobs teamed together with Steve Wozniak to invent one of the first ready-made personal home computers. Steve Jobs was also a smart business who became a multimillionaire before the age of 30. In 1984, he founded NeXT computers. In 1986, he bought the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm Ltd and started Pixar Animation Studios.

Impact Steve Jobs Had On History of Computers Steve Jobs co-invented the Apple I and Apple II computers together with Steve Wozniak (main designer) and others. The Apple II is noted as the first commercially successful line of personal computers. In 1984, Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and others co-invented the Apple Macintosh computer, the first successful home computer with a mouse-driven graphical user. Steve Jobs Quotes Woz[niak] was the first person I met who knew more about electronics than I did. continue reading below our video Profile of Steve Jobs A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new.

Biography Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955, in Los Altos California. During his high school years, Jobs worked summers at Hewlitt-Packard, it was there that he first met his future business partner Steve Wozniak. He studied as an undergraduate: physics, literature, and poetry, at Reed College, Oregon, an interesting combination of subjects. Steve Jobs formally only attended only one semester at Reed College, however, he remained at Reed crashing on friend's sofas and auditing courses including a calligraphy class, which he attributes as being the reason Apple computers had such elegant typefaces. Atari After leaving Orefon in 1974 and returning to California, Steve Jobs started working for Atari , an early pioneer manufacturer of personal computers. Jobs' close personal friend Steve Wozniak was also working for Atari, and the future founders of Apple teamed together to design games for Atari computers. Hacking Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak also proved their chops as hackers, and designed a telephone blue box. A blue box was an electronic device that simulated a telephone operator's dialing console and provided the user with free phone calls.

Steve Jobs spent plenty of time at Wozniak's Homebrew Computer Club, a haven for computer geeks and a source of invaluable information about the field of personal computers. Out of Mom and Pop's Garage Jobs and Wozniak had learned enough to try their hand at building personal computers. Using Steve Job's family garage as a base of operation, the team produced fifty fully assembled computers that were sold to a local Mountain View electronics store called the Byte Shop. The sale encouraged the pair to found the Apple Corporation on April 1, 1979. Apple Corporation The Apple Corporation was named after Steve Job's favorite fruit. The Apple logo was a representation of the fruit with a bite taken out of it. The bite represented a play on words - bite and byte. During the early 80's , Steve Jobs controlled the business side of the Apple Corporation and Steve Wozniak, the design side. However, in 1984 a power struggle with the board of directors caused Steve Jobs to leave Apple. NeXT After things at Apple got a little rotten, Steve Jobs founded NeXT, a high-end computer company.

Ironically Apple bought NeXT in 1996, and Steve Jobs returned to Apple to serve once more as its CEO from 1997 until his recent retirement in 2011. The NeXT was an amazing workstation computer that sold poorly. The world's first web browser was created on a NeXT, and the technology in NeXT software was transferred to the Macintosh and the iPhone . Disney Pixar In 1986, Steve Jobs bought "The Graphics Group" from Lucasfilm's computer graphics division for ten million dollars. The company was later renamed Pixar. At first, Jobs intended that Pixar become a high-end graphic hardware developer, but that goal was not well achieved, and Pixar moved on to do what it does best - make animated films. Steve Jobs negotiated Pixar and Disney to collaborate on a number of animated films including Toy Story. In 2006, Disney bought Pixar from Steve Jobs. Expanding Apple After Steve Jobs return to Apple as CEO in 1997, Apple Computers has had a renaissance in product development with the iMac, iPod , iPhone , iPad and more.

Before his death, Steve Jobs was listed as the inventor and/or co-inventor on 342 United States patents, with technologies ranging from computer and portable devices, user interfaces, speakers, keyboards, power adapters, staircases, clasps, sleeves, lanyards and packages. His last patent was issued for the Mac OS X Dock user interface and was granted the day before his death. Steve Jobs dies; Apple co-founder was 56 - The Washington Post Steve Jobs dies; Apple co-founder was 56 The inside track on Washington politics. Be the first to know about new stories from PowerPost. Sign up to follow, and we’ll e-mail you free updates as they’re published. You’ll receive free e-mail news updates each time a new story is published. You’re all set! By Patricia Sullivan By Patricia Sullivan October 5, 2011 Follow @psullivan1 Steve Jobs , a co-founder of Apple Inc., who introduced simple, well-designed computers for people who were more interested in what technology could do than in how it was done, died Wednesday at age 56. In a brief statement, Apple announced the death but did not say where he died. Mr.

Jobs, who suffered from a rare form of pancreatic cancer and had a liver transplant in 2009, stepped down as Apple’s chief executive on Aug. 24. An original thinker who helped create the Macintosh , one of the world’s most influential computers, Mr. Jobs also reinvented the portable music player with the iPod, launched the first successful legal method of selling music online with iTunes and reordered the cellphone market with the iPhone. The introduction of the iPad also jump-started the electronic-tablet market, and it now dominates the field. Calculating that people would be willing to pay a premium price for products that signaled creativity, Mr. Jobs had a genius for understanding the needs of consumers before they did. He knew best of all how to market: “Mac or PC?” became one of the defining questions of the late 20th century, and although Apple sold a mere 5 percent of all computers during that era, Mac users became rabid partisans . Mr. Jobs was the first crossover technology star, turning Silicon Valley renown into Main Street recognition and paving the way for the rise of the nerds, such as Yahoo founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

And by changing the way people interacted with technology, Jobs and Microsoft founder Bill Gates transformed their era in much the same way Henry Ford and John D. Rockefeller revolutionized theirs with the mass-produced automobile and the creation of Standard Oil. As a 21-year-old college dropout in 1976, Mr. Jobs founded Apple with his friend Steve Wozniak. He led the company to multimillion-dollar success within five years but was forced out by the time he was 30. Mr. Jobs started another computer firm, Next, whose technology was used to create the World Wide Web. He later took over a foundering computer animation company and turned it into the Academy Award-winning Pixar , maker of “Toy Story” and “Finding Nemo.” Returning to Apple in his 40s, Mr. Jobs restored the company to profitability by paring down the product line and being a leader in innovation. Known for his complex and combative temperament, Mr. Jobs was a private man. But in a June 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, he talked openly about his pancreatic cancer, diagnosed in 2004, in a video that became an Internet sensation.

He later became furious about speculation over his health in mid-2008, when he appeared in public looking gaunt. Later that year, he took a leave of absence from the company to have a liver transplant. In January, he took another medical leave. On Aug. 24 he stepped down as Apple’s chief executive, becoming chairman of the board. Apple’s share price immediately dropped 5 percent on the news, but it rebounded the next day. “Steve Jobs running the company from jail would be better for the stock price than Steve Jobs not being CEO,” one stock analyst told Fortune magazine in early 2011. His innovations led Business 2.0 to call him “easily the greatest marketer since P.T. Barnum.” One of his employees, noting that Mr. Jobs was able to persuade people to believe almost anything, coined the phrase “reality distortion field” to describe his ability to warp an audience’s sense of proportion. Mr. Jobs described the Macintosh computer, for example, as “insanely great.” Maybe it was. It was designed for the home and creative professional user, not the computer-science student or the bottom-line-oriented businessman.

During a famous 1979 visit to Xerox Parc , the hotbed of innovation where the computer mouse, networking and graphical user interface were invented, Mr. Jobs and Wozniak learned that computer users did not have to type in a series of commands to make the computer perform; they could simply point their mouse at a picture of a file and click it to get the file to open. That recognition sparked a flurry of innovation unmatched in technology until the designers of Microsoft’s operating software mimicked the look and feel of their competitors with Windows 95. Years later, discussing computer design in another context, Mr. Jobs said: “Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer, that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” He could control how it works because Apple “makes the whole widget,” as Mr. Jobs repeatedly said — software and hardware. The company introduced monitors with color screens long before others.

Locked out of many retail chains because of its small market share, Apple responded with its own distinctively branded stores, to which users flock like pilgrims. The Mac, Mr. Jobs saw, could become the hub of a digital lifestyle. Not everything worked out. A 1983 computer, Lisa, failed miserably. Even the “insanely great” Macintosh, sold without a letter-quality printer and incompatible with other computers, had a difficult start, even though it launched the desktop publishing revolution. But that wasn’t the first rough start in Mr. Jobs’s life. Steven Paul Jobs was born Feb. 24, 1955, in San Francisco to unwed parents, University of Wisconsin graduate student Joanne Carole Schieble and Syrian exchange student Abdulfattah Jandali. Paul and Clara Jobs adopted him shortly after his birth. Mr. Jobs grew up in Northern California and showed an early interest in electronics. While working on a project as an eighth-grader, he saw he was missing a part. Undaunted, he called William Hewlett, co-founder and president of Hewlett-Packard, who prepared a bag of parts for him — and offered him a summer internship. Mr.

Jobs attended Reed College in Portland, Ore., in 1972. He dropped out after a semester because of financial issues but continued to audit classes at the liberal arts school for 18 months. He then worked part time at Atari to raise money for a trip to India in the summer of 1974, studying meditation and shaving his head. He also lived in a commune for a short time. In 1975, he began associating with a group of computer aficionados known as the Homebrew Computer Club. Wozniak, a technical whiz, was trying to build a small computer, and Mr. Jobs became fascinated with its potential. In 1976, he and Wozniak introduced the Apple I, the first low-cost microcomputing system, for $666, and sold about 200 units. They followed that up in 1977 with the Apple II, a redesigned model that had impressive sales of $2.7 million in its first year. The company’s sales grew to $600 million by 1981 and created a market of personal computer users.

The Macintosh was introduced in 1984 with a commercial during the third quarter of the Super Bowl. The advertisement, designed by ad agency Chiat/Day and directed by Ridley Scott, fresh off his classic science-fiction film “Blade Runner,” ran just once, but it was named by Advertising Age as the commercial of the decade. As controversial as he was creative, Mr. Jobs enforced a culture of secrecy at Apple’s Cupertino, Calif., headquarters. Mr. Jobs, who grew up idolizing the Hewlett-Packard ideal of an egalitarian workplace where employees were valued, was known in his younger years for playing pranks on underlings, reversing direction without acknowledging that he had changed his mind and yelling at company directors. He also refused to acknowledge paternity or pay child support for his first daughter for years. He threatened to sue teens who published Apple gossip on their Web sites. In 1985, after tangling with John Sculley, the Pepsi executive he brought in to run the company, Mr. Jobs sold $20 million worth of stock and resigned from Apple. He and Wozniak had just received the National Medal of Technology from President Ronald Reagan.

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me,” he said in his 2005 address at Stanford. “The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.” After several months, Mr. Jobs hired some of his former employees to begin a new computer company, called Next. During that period, Mr. Jobs paid filmmaker George Lucas $10 million for a small computer animation firm and, over the next six years, he poured another $40 million of his own money into the company as it set out to make the first computer-animated feature film, “Toy Story.” In late 1996, Apple bought Next for more than $400 million. Within months, Mr. Jobs was back at Apple as an adviser and quickly became chief executive again. He stunned the faithful at a Macworld conference in August 1997 when he announced a partnership with Microsoft, accepting a $150 million investment in exchange for preloading Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser on Apple computers.

An unprecedented alliance between rivals, the deal ultimately saved the company by reassuring customers that they could use Microsoft’s ubiquitous Office software on Macs. “We want to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose,” Mr. Jobs said, to shouts of dismay from his normally adoring audience. “Madman at the wheel, eh?” he added, laughing, as he walked off the stage. That was just the start of his revival of the company. The “Think Different” advertising campaign got the world’s attention again, followed by the 1998 introduction of the colorful iMac desktop computer, which sold 1 million in a year. In 1999, the iBook appeared, a brightly colored, clam-shaped laptop that enabled wireless Web surfing. Consumer releases came out in a rush. An overlooked technology called FireWire, a tool for quickly moving large amounts of data between digital devices, allowed the creation of iMovie, software that encouraged non-experts to make home videos. The iPod, an MP3-like player with room for thousands of songs, was introduced in October 2001 and has sold hundreds of millions of units.

The iTunes application, which allowed consumers to legally buy and download music, started in April 2003 and revolutionized the digital music industry — more than 6 billion songs have been sold. Mr. Jobs and Apple were suddenly cool again. The iPhone’s debut in 2007 generated a huge buzz , and it soon rolled over the competition from Palm Computing and BlackBerry, despite its higher cost. The iPad, a tablet-based computer introduced in January 2010, sold more than 10 million units its first year. Although Mr. Jobs’s salary was $1 per year, his stock options made him rich. His fortune was estimated to be $5.4 billion by Forbes magazine in its 2008 survey of the richest people in the world. But nothing came without controversy. Even as Apple’s stock was booming and its business thriving, Mr. Jobs faced scrutiny in a scandal about Apple’s backdating of stock options . Like many companies, Apple had given out stock options with effective dates chosen later, after it was known that the price was low on those dates, making the stock more valuable once it was sold. Mr.

Jobs wasn’t the only employee who benefited, but the company said his options were approved at a special board meeting that never took place. The company was forced to restate its earnings, but a special company investigation concluded that Mr. Jobs had done nothing wrong. Survivors include his wife since 1991, Laurene Powell; a daughter from a previous relationship, Lisa Brennan-Jobs; three children from his marriage, Eve Jobs, Erin Sienna Jobs and Reed Paul Jobs; and two sisters, Mona Simpson and Patti Jobs.

Related Content: Steve Jobs: co-founder of Apple dies aged 56 - Telegraph Steve Jobs tribute on Apple's website four years ago Photo: APPLE Flags fly at half-mast outside Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California Photo: REUTERS/Norbert von der Groeben Image 1 of 5 Born on February 24, 1955 and raised in Palo Alto, California, Jobs founded Apple in his family's garage in 1976 with his friend Steve Wozniak (above left) Photo: Getty Images Image 1 of 5 Candles, flowers, and an iPhone with Steve Jobs photo showing outside the Apple Store at West 66th Street in New York Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images Image 1 of 5 Candles are used to create the Apple logo and Steve Jobs' last name in Chinese characters at a makeshift memorial at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California Photo: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Question: Who, with Steve Jobs, founded Apple Computers?
Answer: STEVE WOZNIAK